| Since WTO actively promotes global trade facilitation, China not only takes positive participation in trade facilitation actions, is committed to the elimination of such "trade inefficiency" barriers, but also vigorously promotes the domestic process of trade facilitation. In China, the trade costs have been declining, and the trade facilitation level has made considerable progress. At the same time, the degree of agglomeration of various sectors are rising, the number of high concentration degree industries continues to increase, the number of low degree concentration industries is declining (Wen and Xian,2014), while business ecosystem theory stresses that the relationship between enterprise survival environment and itself greatly affects business performance (Moore,1993). So, under the realistic background of increasing industry agglomeration, the impact of trade facilitation on firm productivity and export performance will vary depending on the degree of industry agglomeration. Therefore, on the basis of heterogeneous firm trade theory and classical literature research, the dissertation firstly analyses the impact mechanism of trade facilitation on firm productivity and export performance, then, analyzes the change of the impact given the growing industry agglomeration degree, and finally, by empirical data, draws conclusions. The difference is that with the previous studies, this dissertation applies trade facilitation research which is often used to measure the national level in many documents to the micro-level, also makes analysis of the effects of trade facilitation on firm performance (including firm productivity and export performance) how the effects respond to the change of the degree of industry agglomeration.This dissertation consists of seven chapters:The first chapter is the introduction, which describes the background, significance, objectives, research review, research content and research plans. The second chapter is the definition of relevant concepts and theories. It briefly reviews relevant concepts, the theories of international trade and the main theoretical basis associated with this article using the method of literature review.The third chapter is the influence mechanism of trade facilitation on firm productivity and export performance from the Perspective of Industry Agglomeration. On the one hand, this chapter respectively combs the impact mechanism of trade facilitation and industry agglomeration on firm productivity based on the former relative studies; then, drawing lessons from Bas and Strauss-Kahn(2014), Ahsan(2010), constructs an analysis framework of the influence of trade facilitation on firm productivity from the Perspective of Industry Agglomeration. On the other hand, the chapter also explores Melitz(2003)’s heterogeneous firm trade model and GSW(2004)’s multinational export spillover model, learns from Li and Wilson (2009), and comprehensively builds a micro-mechanism of trade facilitation on export performance from the Perspective of Industry Agglomeration.Chapter 4 is the quantitative analysis and regional comparative of China’s trade facilitation development. It firstly reviews the measures of nation’s trade facilitation and summarizes four fields of trade facilitation; then constructs a trade facilitation composite index for China and its each region by standardized analysis method. Chapter 5 is an empirical research of trade facilitation on firm productivity from the Perspective of Industry Agglomeration, which firstly builds a continuous difference-in-difference model of trade facilitation and industry agglomeration on firm productivity; then this chapter empirically analyzes the last chapter’s proposition 1 and proposition 2 using Chinese industrial firm-level micro data from 2000 to 2007 and empirically tests the effects of trade facilitation on firm productivity and how the effects respond to the degree of industry agglomeration of the industry that the firm belongs to. In chapter 6, we empirically investigate the effect of trade facilitation on firm export performance from the Perspective of Industry Agglomeration. Firstly, we develop a continuous difference-in-difference model of trade facilitation and industry agglomeration on export performance. Secondly, we empirically study the chapter 4’s proposition 3-8 using the same data as last chapter. Thirdly, we investigate the effects of trade facilitation on firm export performance and how the effects respond to the change of the degree of industry agglomeration of firm’s industry. The last chapter is the conclusion part. The full text of the study is summarized, and the implication of policy and the ideas of further study are presented.Through theoretical and empirical analysis, the research conclusions can be summarized as followings.First, the impact of trade facilitation on firm productivity:the advance of trade facilitation significantly improves productivity levels of firms, especially for those with high degree of agglomeration. Specifically, the four areas involved in trade facilitation-customs efficiency and e-commerce applications, legal environment, transport infrastructure, all contribute to the firm productivity. And higher degree of industry agglomeration leads to greater role they play. In addition, with different firm groupings, the impact of trade facilitation on firm productivity varies and it also makes differences when the degree of industry agglomeration of the industry that the firm belongs to changes.Second, trade facilitation on export performance:the promotion of trade facilitation significantly increases export orientation and volume, particularly for the industries and firms with high degree of industry agglomeration. Specifically, both in promoting export orientation and volume, four areas related to trade facilitation ---customs efficiency, e-commerce applications, legal environment, and transport infrastructure, all have a significant role and the role will be greater when the firm’s industry agglomeration degree increases. And it was also found that the impact of trade facilitation on export participation is significantly greater than that of the expansion of trade facilitation on export volume, especially for the firm with the higher degree of industry agglomeration, which fully shows that trade facilitation in promoting the expansion of China’s export trade is mainly applied to increasing the number of Chinese export firms rather than the export volume. Furthermore, it also compares the impacts of trade facilitation on export orientation and export volume under different conditions, and how the impacts respond to the degree of industry agglomeration of the industry that the firm is in.
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